SEOUL: The official statistics released by the Korean administration suggests huge drop in scrap steel import volume by the country during the month of July this year. The monthly imports dropped to less than 500,000 for the first time in three months.
As per statistics, the country’s scrap imports totaled 482,000 tons in July this year. This is down by 5.3% when matched with the prior month. The Korean scrap steel imports had totaled 509,000 tons during June this year. When compared with the previous year, July ’16 imports were down sharply by 13.7%. The country had imported around 560,000 tons of scrap steel during July 2015.
The key exporter of scrap to Korea during the month was Japan. The scrap steel imports from Japan totaled 289,000 tons, accounting for nearly 60% of total imports. The imports from Japan witnessed year-on-year decline of 9.6%. The Korean scrap imports from Russia totaled 90,000 tons during the month, dropping by over 12% when matched with July 2015. The scrap imports from the US too declined by 11.2% year-on-year to 60,000 tons during the month.
The country’s cumulative scrap imports during the initial seven-month period of the year totaled 3.298 million tons. The imports during the period were marginally down by 1.1% when matched with the corresponding period last year. The monthly imports have averaged at 471,000 tons during the year. The yearly imports are estimated to touch 5.65 million tons during 2016.
